AMD Radeon R7 M440 vs AMD Radeon R7 M380 vs AMD Radeon R7 M360

AMD Radeon R7 M440

The AMD Radeon R7 M440 is a entry level dedicated graphics card for laptops introduced in mid 2016. The technical details are the same as the previous Radeon R9 M340. Therefore it offers 320 shader cores clocked at 1,120 MHz and 2 GB DDR3 graphics memory at 1000 MHz with a 64 Bit interface. The chip is produced in 28 nm and not the new 14 nm process as the Polaris RX 400M series cards.

The gaming performance is comparable to the Radeon R7 M340 (as it has the same specs) or an Nvidia GeForce 920M. Therefore, demanding games of 2015 and 2016 may only be playable in the lowest detail settings and low resolutions.

AMD Radeon R7 M380

The AMD Radeon R7 M380 is a dedicated graphics card for laptops. It is based on the a 28nm GCN core with 10 compute units and a 128 Bit DDR3 memory bus. Despite the similar name, the R9 M380 offers a better performance due to 2 more compute units and GDDR5 graphics memory. The R7 M380 is similar to the R9 M375 (which is slightly higher clocked) and therefore is position in the mid-range in 2015.

Performance

If slow DDR3 graphics memory is used, the performance should be somewhere close to a Radeon R9 M270 (see for gaming benchmarks). Therefore, demanding games are running in low to medium details.

The 640 shaders can be used with OpenCL 1.2 for general-purpose calculations (as 10 compute units).

Features

Features of the R7-M380 include video decoding for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Flash directly by the AMD GPU. Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos are compatible as well.

The R7 series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, the M380 can directly support multiple monitors using Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.

Other features include ZeroCore to reduce the power consumption when the display is turned off and Power Gating to power down areas of the chip that are not used. 

The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it allows audio output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.

AMD Radeon R7 M360

The AMD Radeon R7 M360 is a dedicated lower-mid-range graphics card for laptops that was announced in mid 2015. It is based on a new derivative of the Tonga chip and therefore supports DirectX 12, Vulkan and FreeSync. The core is clocked at relatively high 1015 MHz, however, the bottleneck may be the use of slow 64-bit DDR3 graphics memory.

Performance

The performance of the R7-M360 is slightly above the slower clocked Radeon R7 M260 (64-bit model) and silimar to a GeForce 920M. Therefore, very demanding modern games like Dragon Age: Inquisition or Evolve are only playable at the lowest graphics settings.

The 384 shaders can be used with OpenCL 1.2 for general-purpose calculations (as 10 compute units).

Features

Features of the R7-M360 include video decoding for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Flash directly by the AMD GPU. Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos are compatible as well.

The R7 series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, the M375 can directly support multiple monitors using the Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.

Other features include ZeroCore for a reduced power consumption when the display is turned off and Power Gating to power down areas of the chip that are not used. 

The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it allows audio output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.